Equivalence between Step Selection Functions and Biased Correlated Random Walks for Statistical Inference on Animal Movement.

ABSTRACT: Animal movement has a fundamental impact on population and community structure and dynamics. Biased correlated random walks (BCRW) and step selection functions (SSF) are commonly used to study movements. Because no studies have contrasted the parameters and the statistical properties of their estimators for models constructed under these two Lagrangian approaches, it remains unclear whether or not they allow for similar inference. First, we used the Weak Law of Large Numbers to demonstrate that the log-likelihood function for estimating the parameters of BCRW models can be approximated by the log-likelihood of SSFs. Second, we illustrated the link between the two approaches by fitting BCRW with maximum likelihood and with SSF to simulated movement data in virtual environments and to the tr

SUBMITTER: Duchesne T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4405542 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature